Obscurity, much?/Videogames
The video game industry is infamous for churning out relatively obscure games, especially if they're not from the big three companies (Microsoft also has its own gaming system, but that's a different story entirely). Pokémon has its own page. Consoles/peripherals/online gaming *Inverted with the Sega Dreamcast. While [[Point of discontinuation|it was Sega's shortest-lived console]] (and its last), its games (and the system itself) became cult hits in America. It got to the point where not only Markiplier mentioned the Dreamcast when he was playing Sonic Dreams Collection, but the Angry Video Game Nerd himself called the Dreamcast a good console to go out with. *The Nintendo DSi Shop. Ever since the Nintendo 3DS' own eShop came out, the Nintendo DSi Shop kept getting more and more obscure, leading to its only use being to get the transfer tool if you want to transfer your DSiWare onto your 3DS. Bad news? The only piece of software the 3DS couldn't accept was the original Flipnote Studio (an understandable move, as Nintendo released a successor app called Flipnote Studio 3D). Eventually Nintendo took notice of the DSi Shop's obscurity and discontinued it. In Australia. And did the same thing for North America's DSi Shop right on the day before April Fools' Day 2017. Which makes a DSi that you just bought pretty much useless as of 2016. Nintendo's still allowing people to download DSiWare through the 3DS' eShop, but... *The Nintendo 64DD is semi-obscure outside Japan, since it wasn't officially released outside Japan. It was planned for an American release, but the GameCube was on its way and Nintendo didn't want to risk low sales while people waited for the GameCube. *While it's still possible to play Nintendo GameCube games (some videogame stores still sell GameCube games, usually in pre-played condition), its e-Reader accessory is semi-obscure at best. Copies of the peripheral go for around $18 used online. The few games that mention it include, but are not limited to, Animal Crossing and Pokémon Channel. *The Virtual Boy in Europe. You're probably wondering, "How could a console released in Japan and North America that got a lot of bad publicity and was deemed one of Nintendo's biggest follies be obscure in a place like Europe?" Said bad publicity was the reason why the console never even received an European release. **There were only 14 games released in North America. That's how big of a failure (it wasn't semi-obscure at the time of its release) the Virtual Boy was. *Contrary to popular belief, the Game Boy averted this and went on to become a staple of discussions about Nintendo's history with handheld gaming. **Though some of the system's third-party games and peripherals are semi-obscure at best. **Its successor, the Game Boy Advance, fell into this. Out of the various models, only the original and SP models are talked about when referring to a GBA. The Micros are usually only found at used game shops or eBay (some may be on Amazon if you're lucky, but most won't be cheap), but the DVD player that allowed you to play GBA games is completely obscure. ***The original Nintendo DS and DS Lite models, which avert this, still allowed GBA gameplay, only for Nintendo to ditch GBA backwards-compatibility for the DSi. Nintendo's Ambassadors program offered 3DS "Ambassadors" (people who paid the original launch price) ten free GBA games as an "apology" of sorts. *To the dismay of thousands of backers, the company who made the ZX Spectrum Vega+, Retro Computers Ltd, played the console up as this outside of Indiegogo itself. What happened? Legal fees, investigations, and its eventual administration (in the United Kingdom, bankruptcy only applies to individuals) and wind-up made sure only 100 "blankety-blanks" came out. Daniel Ibbertson actually made an extended KickScammers episode dedicated to the fallout caused by Retro Computers' scandal, and to make matters worse, Retro Computers was now legally prohibited from ever selling further Vega+ consoles again following Sky revoking the former's license. It could be an aversion, but no one outside the backers and anyone who worked for Retro Computers knew about the device until the KickScammers episode cropped up and got over 304,000 views. Individual games/game series *''Was'' supposed to be the case with Fire Emblem in North America. Had Super Smash Bros. Melee's Western localization dummied out Marth and Roy, Fire Emblem would have had nothing more than its OVA released in the West. But then the localization team kept in Marth and Roy, and that's the story of how Fire Emblem escaped this in the West. Some games in the series are still obscure outside Japan, but thankfully those were released on consoles that have long since been discontinued and will likely escape obscurity via a 3DS port. *The PlayStation Portable version of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc outside Japan due to never having been localized. Everything in the Danganronpa franchise after that, however, including the PlayStation Vita version, Danganronpa 2, both anime series, and V3, were localized. *''Donkey Kong: **The arcade version is this thanks to many arcades closing down. It was later ported to the NES, which was itself ported to Animal Crossing and Nintendo's ''Virtual Console line. ***This especially affected its sequel Donkey Kong Jr.- outside of a re-release of the NES port in the first Animal Crossing, a re-release of the Game & Watch port (itself ported to the Game Boy as part of its Game & Watch Gallery series in the 1990s; see below) as DSiWare, and a re-release of the NES port to Nintendo 3DS Ambassadors (people who paid the launch price for their 3DS) and as part of the Virtual Console line, the original arcade game itself hasn't been mentioned by Nintendo since the 1990s. **The Game Boy port (not related to the various Game Boy Advance ports), especially if you're after a physical copy (it was ported to Nintendo's Virtual Console line). It's rare to see a video of it on YouTube, and brand new copies will make you shell out a bunch of cash just to get it. Used copies aren't much better, the cheapest going for a little more than $7 on Amazon as of this writing. **Apparently, not many people know that Cranky Kong was the original Donkey Kong. Same with the Cranky in Tropical Freeze, who apparently is the original DKC's Donkey Kong. *Speaking of the Game & Watch, the original Game & Watch games are completely obscure. For new Game & Watch fans, your best bet is playing as Mr. Game & Watch in Super Smash Bros. or playing the DSiWare re-releases (not to mention the Virtual Console releases of the Game & Watch Gallery series). Oh, yeah. And they cost money. Ironically, Nintendo still knows about the Game & Watch and even named a WarioWare game after it (albeit replacing "Watch" with "Wario"). *While it's rare to find an obscure Mario game, the PC games definitely count as this. **And its three TV shows as well (though the latter did become a cult hit on YouTube thanks to YouTube Poop). WildBrain Spark eventually ended up uploading official online prints of the series. **The one-two-three punch of Mario games: Super Mario Bros. 2 (Japanese), Doki Doki Panic and Super Mario Bros. 2. The former game initially was this outside Japan due to Nintendo of America deeming the game too hard for America; it was eventually released in North America (remade) on Super Mario All-Stars, and eventually the original version was released in North America via the Wii, 3DS, and Nintendo Switch (but no physical releases). The releases in the US market the game as The Lost Levels due to Super Mario Bros. 2 (the game the US got), which was basically the first and only US appearance of characters from Doki Doki Panic, a game otherwise obscure outside Japan, and the first appearance of the enemies within Doki Doki Panic. As for Super Mario Bros. 2 US? It was the only one involved in the mess that didn't have that obscurity, as it was re-released multiple times. *Animal Crossing itself, at least before the first GameCube version came to the West. As of this writing, if you ask a Western gamer how many games are in the franchise, they'll probably say 7 (the GameCube version, Wild World, City Folk, New Leaf, Happy Home Designer, Pocket Camp, and New Horizons). However, the original N64 version (as well as another version released after the GameCube version ported to the West) was never released outside Japan, and thus is only mentioned as part of the franchise's history in the West. *If you thought the Animal Crossing situation was bad, try the Shaman King videogames. None of the 8 games released in Japan ever left there, and the games that are released in North America never got into Japan. As such, the games are completely obscure outside their countries of origin. *Aside from Ultimate Muscle, Kinnikuman is this in the West. *Puyo Puyo has a long history of this combined with games not getting released overseas. Basically any Puyo Puyo game that stays in Japan is completely obscure in the West. *Speaking of Sega, Sonic the Hedgehog, as popular as he is in the West, has some examples: **Several spin-off games were initially this as they were not released stateside at the time, though Sonic game collections and the Virtual Console fixed that. **Non-videogame example: The Sonic manga never made it stateside, while the Sonic comic books never made it to Japan. Thus characters exclusive to the Western Sonic comic had their only appearance in Japan in Sonic Spinball and thus are fairly obscure there. ***Even when the TV anime came out stateside, the Sonic manga didn't follow and thus said manga remained obscure in the West. Instead, a comic version of Sonic X was written and released, which itself became obscure. *Kingdom Hearts: Coded is better known stateside as Re:coded due to the original version never leaving Japan. *Basically any video game based on an anime series, unless it was developed in North America, because they would (usually) not leave Japan to begin with. Videogames based off of popular Weekly Shonen Jump manga are usually the only exceptions. *The Jewelpet videogames never saw release outside Japan, not even in Europe despite the anime getting its first two seasons localized and released there. North America at least has a reason for this, though... *Ever wonder why there are so few games not from South Korea that make it there? It's because game systems were very obscure in the country back in the 1990s and 2000s (and there was a ban on anything related to Nintendo, Sega and Sony there in the 1980s, since all three are Japanese companies). This is starting to change, though. *The first South Park games are obscure outside North America. Ironically, they're based on a long-running Comedy Central series that became popular within the span of six episodes. The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole have averted this upon release. *Pixel Chix can actually punish you for forgetting about it for a week or so- said Pixel Chix will get disgusted and move out, thus requiring you to restart the game. *''Tomodachi Collection'' outside Japan, at least at first. This changed with Tomodachi Life. *Outside of North America, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing was this until internet reviewers (the Angry Video Game Nerd included) played the game. In North America, it was always notorious for being so bad, it's good due to, on top of poor programming, being a game where the player cannot lose.